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TomF,
This was posted by you a while back, in the middle of another thread. I had saved it aside, and was re-reading it today.
Thanks for this, it was very enlightening.
I think it deserves it's own post.
TomZ
OK, before I get banned for the pictures I posted elsewhere of people slaughtered in the Syrian war, I should probably answer Keith's question here. I'm paraphrasing (and bastardizing) Rob Bell's presentation - which was simply littered with examples from the Archaeological record, with translations of glyphs across countless different cultures (including pre-Israelite Mesopotamia, the Aztecs, etc. etc.). I'm not gonna bother citing his examples - it's there in the video if you want to watch it.
The heart of Judaism, which through Jesus' teaching became the heart of Christianity, is that God is not a God demanding sacrifices. The God of Israel is a god who diverges from how the other Gods act, in a radical way. Pushing the envelope of the belief systems of each successive time period recorded in the Bible, each time reducing the apparent demands placed on the people to offer a sacrifice to placate him.
Bell says that the history of religions across cultures, mythologies, times, languages and ages ... is a history of people trying to placate The Gods. People who lived in a world where their lives and the lives of their family depended on stuff well outside their control - like weather, insect populations, warlike neighbours etc.. Across the globe, people figured that there must be Gods who are responsible for that stuff. A god of rain, to get the wheat crop enough water. A god of sun, for obvious reasons. A god of protection from enemies, or of victory in battle, or etc. Across the globe, the existential dilemma was how to get these gods' attention, and try to get them on your side. To figure out what they wanted, and buy yourself some safety, somehow.
So people started to pay "protection money" to Gods - a tithe of the harvest, to try and ensure a good harvest next time. If the harvest failed anyway ... clearly you hadn't offered enough. So Altars emerged, and complicated Rites, to tart-up the offering and get the Gods' attention. When the harvest or the war turned out well, obviously you had to give more ... to show gratitude. When things went the other way, obviously you had to give more to show your devotion, and try to bribe your way into the Gods' favour. Over time, cultures progressed giving more and more "valuable" things, to prove their devotion. The best animals in their herds. The best and smartest of their tribes, to be Priests. And yeah, as the Aztecs brought to a keen pinnacle ... they offered human life.
Happened in the religions in the lands around Palestine too - the Moloch cult was about offering babies to be burned. But lots of others did the same - in the Chaldees (where Abraham allegedly came from), human sacrifice was part of the game too, in some instances. We've got written records.
So as Rob Bell pointed out, the surprise in the story of the "Sacrifice of Isaac" wasn't that Abraham thought God made such a brutal demand. He knew what to do - he went (like the ritual in the surrounding religions demanded) to a mountain, climbed up, built an altar and brought along a knife. It's just what was done. The surprise is in God saying - NO!
Abraham was enough a man of his own history and culture to think that God really needed blood - and as much "reversal" as he could imagine was that God isn't a God who takes your most valuable thing ... God is a God who provides an alternative, and saves your child's life compared with what you'd expected a God would require. This is a foundational story not because God is (in our modern eyes) a bloodthirsty and cruel SOB, but because in Abraham's eyes, God is impossibly generous compared with his expectations.
Bell goes through an hour's worth of examples from biblical history showing the progression of that idea, 'till we get to Jesus.
In the Book of Hebrews, Bell says that the rubber hits the road. It challenges the whole notion of the altar, and the need to give sacrifices AT ALL to placate God. The writer's point is that it isn't God that ever demanded sacrifices. If you wonder about that conclusion, re-read Micah, or Amos, or Hosea, or Isaiah - it's actually in the written text. Hebrews says that God has, from the very first, been a God who provides - not a God who demands. But that WE couldn't quite believe it, surrounded as we were by all the history and the competing religions that had sacrifice as a Big Deal. And Judaism (and later Christianity) built a huge big business empire out of the sacrifice thing, which concentrated a whole lot of power and wealth in the hands of the Priests and the Religious Hierarchy. They had little incentive to re-think the Altar/Sacrifice model.
The writer of Hebrews says that God allowed us to keep the Altar model, trying to gradually scale down its demands compared with other religions and historical practices ... because it psychologically felt better to us. It didn't mean a rat's @ss to God, but it helped us to feel less anxiety. To believe that we were participating in something.
Jesus' crucifixion wasn't about placating God's monumental blood lust - the writer of Hebrews says that it was about putting an end to the whole Sacrifice schtick. No more. No more blood sprinkled on the horns of the Altar. No more cheating people out of their wealth or their animals, enriching those at the top through guilt-tripping and rules. No more. The crucifixion was about changing the script. The sacrifice wasn't given to God, it was given to us. To get us all off that wheel of guilt, anxiety, and obligation.
What's at the heart of Christianity isn't God's monstrous, insatiable blood-lust, it's compassion. Compassion for our rather limited psychological capacities, and for our anxiety.
Now, getting back to those horrific pictures of the Syrian children lying in their own blood. Is God's suffering on the cross redemptive somehow? If so, what the hell is being redeemed?
Jürgen Moltmann addressed this head-on, following WWII, rejecting Atonement theory. He said that a God who hasn't suffered, hasn't suffered unjustly and in extremis, has nothing to say to those Syrian children. Or their parents. In Jesus, we Christians believe that God became one of us - human. The incarnation is about God really being with us, knowing what it is to be human from the inside-out, and identifying with what we suffer. Jesus' suffering isn't redemptive because it placates the bad Old Man for a little while, but because no matter how horrifying our own extremis, God's been there. Is still there with us. We aren't alone.
Those Syrian kids aren't alone, nor are their families. God was tortured and died too - and knows what it's like. That built a bridge with us which still stands. We can go on later and elsewhere about Theodicy - what use is it that God suffers - but to be clear, pacification of God's anger wasn't the reason.
It is a lie at the heart of Christianity when that pacification narrative is presented as the core of the religion. It isn't much of a surprise that the writer of Hebrews was ignored by the Church's hierarchy; the Jewish Temple cult ignored it when Amos, Micah and Hosea said the same things. Even while ironically preserving their condemnations in "Holy Scripture."
The same happened to Jesus' writings. But God's a devious and persistent old bugger, and won't leave off. So there are folks like Rob Bell around re-telling that Good News narrative, people like Pope Francis trying to shift the wheel further.
TomF
From <http://forum.woodenboat.com/showthre...stianity/page2>
This was posted by you a while back, in the middle of another thread. I had saved it aside, and was re-reading it today.
Thanks for this, it was very enlightening.
I think it deserves it's own post.
TomZ
OK, before I get banned for the pictures I posted elsewhere of people slaughtered in the Syrian war, I should probably answer Keith's question here. I'm paraphrasing (and bastardizing) Rob Bell's presentation - which was simply littered with examples from the Archaeological record, with translations of glyphs across countless different cultures (including pre-Israelite Mesopotamia, the Aztecs, etc. etc.). I'm not gonna bother citing his examples - it's there in the video if you want to watch it.
The heart of Judaism, which through Jesus' teaching became the heart of Christianity, is that God is not a God demanding sacrifices. The God of Israel is a god who diverges from how the other Gods act, in a radical way. Pushing the envelope of the belief systems of each successive time period recorded in the Bible, each time reducing the apparent demands placed on the people to offer a sacrifice to placate him.
Bell says that the history of religions across cultures, mythologies, times, languages and ages ... is a history of people trying to placate The Gods. People who lived in a world where their lives and the lives of their family depended on stuff well outside their control - like weather, insect populations, warlike neighbours etc.. Across the globe, people figured that there must be Gods who are responsible for that stuff. A god of rain, to get the wheat crop enough water. A god of sun, for obvious reasons. A god of protection from enemies, or of victory in battle, or etc. Across the globe, the existential dilemma was how to get these gods' attention, and try to get them on your side. To figure out what they wanted, and buy yourself some safety, somehow.
So people started to pay "protection money" to Gods - a tithe of the harvest, to try and ensure a good harvest next time. If the harvest failed anyway ... clearly you hadn't offered enough. So Altars emerged, and complicated Rites, to tart-up the offering and get the Gods' attention. When the harvest or the war turned out well, obviously you had to give more ... to show gratitude. When things went the other way, obviously you had to give more to show your devotion, and try to bribe your way into the Gods' favour. Over time, cultures progressed giving more and more "valuable" things, to prove their devotion. The best animals in their herds. The best and smartest of their tribes, to be Priests. And yeah, as the Aztecs brought to a keen pinnacle ... they offered human life.
Happened in the religions in the lands around Palestine too - the Moloch cult was about offering babies to be burned. But lots of others did the same - in the Chaldees (where Abraham allegedly came from), human sacrifice was part of the game too, in some instances. We've got written records.
So as Rob Bell pointed out, the surprise in the story of the "Sacrifice of Isaac" wasn't that Abraham thought God made such a brutal demand. He knew what to do - he went (like the ritual in the surrounding religions demanded) to a mountain, climbed up, built an altar and brought along a knife. It's just what was done. The surprise is in God saying - NO!
Abraham was enough a man of his own history and culture to think that God really needed blood - and as much "reversal" as he could imagine was that God isn't a God who takes your most valuable thing ... God is a God who provides an alternative, and saves your child's life compared with what you'd expected a God would require. This is a foundational story not because God is (in our modern eyes) a bloodthirsty and cruel SOB, but because in Abraham's eyes, God is impossibly generous compared with his expectations.
Bell goes through an hour's worth of examples from biblical history showing the progression of that idea, 'till we get to Jesus.
In the Book of Hebrews, Bell says that the rubber hits the road. It challenges the whole notion of the altar, and the need to give sacrifices AT ALL to placate God. The writer's point is that it isn't God that ever demanded sacrifices. If you wonder about that conclusion, re-read Micah, or Amos, or Hosea, or Isaiah - it's actually in the written text. Hebrews says that God has, from the very first, been a God who provides - not a God who demands. But that WE couldn't quite believe it, surrounded as we were by all the history and the competing religions that had sacrifice as a Big Deal. And Judaism (and later Christianity) built a huge big business empire out of the sacrifice thing, which concentrated a whole lot of power and wealth in the hands of the Priests and the Religious Hierarchy. They had little incentive to re-think the Altar/Sacrifice model.
The writer of Hebrews says that God allowed us to keep the Altar model, trying to gradually scale down its demands compared with other religions and historical practices ... because it psychologically felt better to us. It didn't mean a rat's @ss to God, but it helped us to feel less anxiety. To believe that we were participating in something.
Jesus' crucifixion wasn't about placating God's monumental blood lust - the writer of Hebrews says that it was about putting an end to the whole Sacrifice schtick. No more. No more blood sprinkled on the horns of the Altar. No more cheating people out of their wealth or their animals, enriching those at the top through guilt-tripping and rules. No more. The crucifixion was about changing the script. The sacrifice wasn't given to God, it was given to us. To get us all off that wheel of guilt, anxiety, and obligation.
What's at the heart of Christianity isn't God's monstrous, insatiable blood-lust, it's compassion. Compassion for our rather limited psychological capacities, and for our anxiety.
Now, getting back to those horrific pictures of the Syrian children lying in their own blood. Is God's suffering on the cross redemptive somehow? If so, what the hell is being redeemed?
Jürgen Moltmann addressed this head-on, following WWII, rejecting Atonement theory. He said that a God who hasn't suffered, hasn't suffered unjustly and in extremis, has nothing to say to those Syrian children. Or their parents. In Jesus, we Christians believe that God became one of us - human. The incarnation is about God really being with us, knowing what it is to be human from the inside-out, and identifying with what we suffer. Jesus' suffering isn't redemptive because it placates the bad Old Man for a little while, but because no matter how horrifying our own extremis, God's been there. Is still there with us. We aren't alone.
Those Syrian kids aren't alone, nor are their families. God was tortured and died too - and knows what it's like. That built a bridge with us which still stands. We can go on later and elsewhere about Theodicy - what use is it that God suffers - but to be clear, pacification of God's anger wasn't the reason.
It is a lie at the heart of Christianity when that pacification narrative is presented as the core of the religion. It isn't much of a surprise that the writer of Hebrews was ignored by the Church's hierarchy; the Jewish Temple cult ignored it when Amos, Micah and Hosea said the same things. Even while ironically preserving their condemnations in "Holy Scripture."
The same happened to Jesus' writings. But God's a devious and persistent old bugger, and won't leave off. So there are folks like Rob Bell around re-telling that Good News narrative, people like Pope Francis trying to shift the wheel further.
TomF
From <http://forum.woodenboat.com/showthre...stianity/page2>
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